


Sixth Day of Christmas - Deck the Halls

by unjaundiced



Series: Holiday Headaches [6]
Category: Naruto
Genre: 12 Days of Christmas, 12 Days of Fic, Gen, Humor, Traditions, bad role models
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-30
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-05-11 20:21:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,909
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5640616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unjaundiced/pseuds/unjaundiced
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pre-New Years cleaning... It's not what it used to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sixth Day of Christmas - Deck the Halls

Iruka took a deep breath and peeked between the gaps of his fingers before clenching his fist tight in determination. He had to do this. It was for the better good. With a resolved determination worthy of a kage on the brink of war, he carefully slid his hand under the cloth, dropped the object into the pot and quickly stepped away. Kakashi patted him on the shoulder before following his action, murmuring a quiet “It's for the best” under his breath. Iruka nodded, not even questioning how the jounin _knew_ what he had done. Even Sasuke probably knew. Poor innocent, enthusiastic, _young_ Naruto was probably the only one who didn't.  
  
Gai-sensei stood with Rock Lee whose leg was still in a cast but who remained gloriously green with an unfailing vibrancy that struggled to overwhelm his beloved sensei's, and held the cloth-covered pot, beaming with the light and love of a thousand Gai clones. The mere _thought_ was disturbing enough to send Kakashi's sensibilities screaming and he reacted by twitching his eyebrow, an unconscious reaction he immediately reined in as he shot a look towards Sasuke, hoping he hadn't been caught looking _uncool_. The Uchiha was being uncool enough for the both of them, his eyebrows twitching like Naruto at the sight of all-you-can-eat ramen stands.  
  
“Yosh! So now we will find out which lucky home we shall be endeavouring to clean first,” Gai announced, posing unnecessarily as he held the pot towards the ceiling as if it was a trophy of a sort. Lee copied his motion, raising a dust rag and apron, both in a weird sherbet swirl of pink and orange.  
  
“Yosh! Now is the time to show our worth as good and noble shinobi of Konoha and help our friends,” Lee cried out, eyes tearing. “Sakura-chan! I will clean your room—”  
  
“No thank you, Lee-san,” she cut in, looking harried. “My mom and I did our cleaning yesterday! I'm only here for Sasuke-kun!”  
  
Lee looked deflated for a moment, but shook it off and beamed even brighter. “Of course! Sakura-chan, you are the epitome of the perfect kunoichi! You are both timely and organized! Your skills shall not go unrecognised!”  
  
Kakashi's eye drooped as Lee ranted on and he slid a glance towards Naruto who was looking confused about the whole thing. Iruka swiftly derailed Lee's rant when he handed the boy a pair of bright orange dish gloves and earned himself a watery hug from the green genin. Naruto shouted when he realized he was missing out on some majour Iruka-sensei hugging time and tried to pull Lee away. Kakashi twitched and pried both genin off, waving a yellow card in front of their faces with menace. Gai laughed and shook the pot, praising them for their enthusiasm.  
  
“Yosh! You are all so energetic! It's good because we are about to embark on our mission to clean the first house,” he cried out.  
  
“Yeah? Yeah? Whose house is it, Gai-sensei,” Naruto called out as he tried to push the yellow card away from his face. Kakashi pressed it against his nose and waved it around some more to make sure he got the point.  
  
“Let us see! First marker: ORANGE! Naruto's house!” Gai pulled out the first marker, an orange button. Lee cheered and dutifully noted it in his trusty notebook. Naruto frowned.  
  
“Who would vote for me? Sakura-chan? Is it you?” He looked excited at the thought of Sakura thinking of him first. She laughed nervously and looked anywhere but at him.  
  
“Second marker: ORANGE! Naruto's house again!” Gai waved the second marker, another orange button. Lee shouted “Naruto's house” and jotted down another tally. Naruto frowned again.  
  
“Me again? Ne, ne, why do so many people want to come to my house? I'll bet it's _you_ and you're just jealous of how awesome my house is!” He looked at Sasuke and grinned broadly.  
  
“Third marker: ORANGE! Naruto's house also!” Gai waved the third marker, yet another orange button. Lee shouted again and tallied another vote. Naruto frowned harder. Something was up.  
  
“Are you sure that's right,” he mumbled. “Something seems—”  
  
“Fourth marker: ORANGE! Naruto's house again!” Gai waved yet another orange button. Lee shouted and tallied the vote. Naruto scrunched his face up into his “painful thinking” pose.  
  
“Fifth marker: ORANGE! Naruto's house!”  
  
More scrunched up frowning.  
  
“Sixth marker: ORANGE! Naruto!”  
  
Iruka frowned with Naruto.  
  
“Seventh marker: ORANGE! Naruto!”  
  
Iruka slid a glance towards Kakashi was was staring at the wall next to Gai, seeming to twitch every time Gai's arm waved grandly.  
  
“Eight marker: ORANGE! Naruto!”  
  
“Hey! Wait a minute! There's not even eight voters! Where's _my_ marker,” Naruto shouted, glaring at the pot as if it was responsible for a multitude of sins.  
  
“I do not know anything, Naruto-kun,” Gai boomed. “I am just the vote counter!”  
  
Iruka frowned and took the pot from Gai, tilted it upside down and rolled his eyes as a fall of orange buttons cascaded to the ground. The flow didn't stop as he carefully tilted it just enough so he could see the blue, black, and white buttons stuck to the bottom of the pot.  
  
“Okay, obviously this ended up being rigged,” he sighed as he righted the pot and stood knee-deep in blindingly orange buttons. “But the buttons may be onto something. Naruto, your house is a little...”  
  
Naruto frowned. “Iruka-sensei. Your house is messy too. Look at all those buttons.”  
  
“These buttons aren't normally here,” Iruka barked. “Your house first. Then Sasuke's. Then Kakashi-sensei's. Then we'll come back here! Everyone thank Gai-sensei and Lee-san for agreeing to help us!”  
  
Naruto huffed and crossed his arms, pouting as Iruka wrapped a scarf around his neck. Sasuke tucked his hands into his pockets and brushed past Naruto, pausing to lightly bump his shoulder in a gesture of sympathy. It could have just been him feeling sorry for himself and his coming suffering. Sakura rolled her eyes and yanked on Naruto's jacket sleeve as she charged after Sasuke.  
  
“Kakashi-sensei. That was unnecessary,” Iruka murmured as he buckled his boots next to the jounin. Kakashi looked at him with surprised innocence.  
  
“Why, Iruka-sensei. How could you say such a thing? I'd never—” His protest was cut off when Iruka jabbed him in the sensitive hollow just behind his knee.  
  
“Just because I agree with your decision doesn't mean I agree with the method. This is the Chuunin Exams nomination all over again,” he muttered under his breath. Kakashi let out a quiet “ah” and looked like he wanted to punch himself.

  
Naruto's apartment was _horrifying_ to be blunt. Lee had youthfully strode through the door and right into a paper bowl partially filled with a cloudy brown sea floated by little green and grey islands. An unintended trap of moldy green dried (now soggy) noodles flew across the room and slapped Sakura in the face. Lee hopped up and down trying to shake the bowl off his foot while simultaneously trying to calm the girl down as she shrieked all the ways she was going to murder Naruto and hide his body in the woods. Sasuke tried to avoid a pile of scrolls and ended up tripping over a stray bit of wire hooked over the dresser and leading somewhere under the bed and found himself face-first in a pile of old milk cartons that sounded chunky and smelled putrid. He sighed at the sheer _uncoolness_ he'd just displayed.  
  
Gai laughed at the _ingenious_ defense mechanism Naruto had concocted as the boy tried to shove things under other things. Iruka followed him like a lost puppy, pulling the cartons out from under the bed as Naruto kicked them under, pulling chopsticks from empty scroll packs as the boy snuck them in, frowning as he activated a storage scroll on a hunch and found a small mountain of ramen bowl covers at his feet. Kakashi followed after him like the lost puppy's best friend with a garbage bag, holding it open so the chuunin could dispose of the trash. Every so often he'd make curious humming noises and touch things, appreciating the sheer effectiveness of Naruto's unintended chaos at disabling intruders. He would have to replicate _that_ thing over there with the scroll and the lamp. It looked _lethal_.  
  
The switch for the lamp across the room rocketed forward with a 'ping' and Kakashi casually pulled Iruka out of the way when he looked up at the sound. The tiny projectile buried itself several inches into the wall plaster like a bullet. Kakashi smiled. He was most definitely stealing that one.  
  
Iruka frowned at the hole in the wall, scooped a bit of goop Naruto had on a desk that he assumed was moulding clay—really hope it wasn't explosive clay—and filled it in. He turned to assault the areas missed by the green tornado that Gai had become and was stopped short when he realised Kakashi was still holding onto his shoulders. He turned back to see what the jounin wanted when the man let go with a quiet “oops” and darted around him to challenge Gai to see who could find more pieces of dirty laundry.  
  
Sasuke groaned in his milk carton pile and decided to play dead.  
  
They'd ended up sitting back and letting Kakashi and Gai do most of the work as they shouted challenges back and forth. Gai was determined that he was a much faster duster. Kakashi was insistent that it was the polishing that came after the dusting that was more important. Quality over quantity and all that. Sakura had gone home to wash her face and hair which she was _determined_ smelled like old ramen, Lee hobbling pitifully after, yammering on about the threat of nuke-nin. Iruka and Naruto had dragged Sasuke to the bed and left him to continue to play dead, but Naruto's long unwashed sheets had magical restorative powers—apparently—and Sasuke had bolted upright choking on the Breath of Life, so he'd been drafted into helping with the washing. Iruka had been forced to step in more than once to keep the boy from burning all of Naruto's things in sheer frustration and had issued yellow cards with extreme prejudice.  
  
Iruka and Naruto were just remaking the bed when Sakura returned, irritated and a little muddy. It seemed Lee had decided to be a bit _too_ chivalrous and gentlemanly and had tried to carry her over a puddle, something she'd protested vehemently (with her fists). She could have just _walked_ over it! The boy just _had_ to do something so embarrassing in front of the Yamanaka flower shop! She'd never live it down!  
  
Naruto stutteringly offered her a clean—really clean. Sasuke had just pulled the laundry from the dryer—shirt and flushed a dangerous red when she'd grudgingly taken it, grateful that it wasn't orange. She'd then physically kicked everyone out of the room, blushing as she allowed that Sasuke could stay. The boy rolled his eyes and made his way out with the rest of the males. Girls. Who could understand them?

 

Both Kakashi and Sasuke's homes were so alike and empty, it was a little frightening. Various types of weaponry were stored neatly around their homes, all well-oiled and honed. Sasuke's room had a small doll he'd hidden under a pillow as soon as they'd entered, something Sakura had squealed over until Iruka had taken her in hand and threatened her with the now-legendary yellow card.   
  
The blankness of Sasuke's home was a little disconcerting, but not something anyone chose to comment on—except for Naruto of course. The blonde genin had shrieked that his teammate had cheated and snuck away to clean earlier, disregarding the fact that Sasuke had been doing _his_ laundry. Sasuke had just rolled his eyes and muttered that he was just not disgusting, which set Naruto off yet _again_ and had resulted in both Kakashi and Iruka waving yellow cards with a vengeance. It was over quickly anyhow, even Sakura's enthusiasm had waned after five minutes of the pure _nothing_ Sasuke's home was.  
  
Kakashi's home, while empty, was far more inviting and surprisingly whimsical in its plainness. His shuriken-patterned sheets matched the shuriken-patterened blanket he'd brought to Iruka's house. An amusing picture of his former chuunin team, adorably grouchy child-Kakashi appropriately cooed at, was proudly displayed next to the familiar picture of Team Seven. A ring on the windowsill marked Ukki-san's normal perch and Naruto almost sliced his finger on a shuriken hidden in a crack between the window and the sill as he poked at it and laughed that Kakashi had weird marks in his room.  
  
There were odd shadows on walls and furniture where one got the sense that something had once lain there and only recently been removed. There were odd numbers of dishes in the cupboards in designs that Iruka realised had slowly been appearing in his. There were odd sides to socks in the drawer and curiously empty hangers where jumpers might have hung. There were empty weapons hooks in the hall closet and in the storage one. Volumes were missing from his vast collection of _Icha Icha_.  
  
Kakashi laughed it off as tanuki stealing his socks and clothes from the wash. He claimed that he'd taken all the missing weaponry in for rebalancing and cleaning and that he'd loaned out the books, but Iruka knew that to be a lie because that long shadow against the corner of the wall matched the length of the naginata that had appeared on the narrow ledge above his bed one day after Kakashi had visited. The long heavy oversized kunai that would normally have been paired with that Fuuma shuriken on the wall were currently lodged in the secret compartment under the kotatsu where he liked to sit from when he'd stolen it to see if he could and if Kakashi would notice. He could and Kakashi hadn't. He also knew that all of Kakashi's missing laundry was mixed in his with his as the jounin left things lying around after a visit. He'd even gathered quite the collection of _Icha Icha_ because of it and had meant to return them, but never quite remembered to do it.  
  
Gai cheered that the room had come pre-cleaned and gleefully ushered them out the door, asking if anyone wanted to visit his home, even though it was on the opposite side of the village. Aside from Lee's over-enthusiastic crow of acquiescence, there was a resounding shout of “NO!” Konoha's Green Beast had just laughed heartily and claimed his home would have overwhelmed them with its youthfulness before hopping onto the rooftop and skipping off towards Iruka's house.  
  
“Kakashi-sensei,” Iruka called ahead, quieting as he caught up to the jounin. “You should remember to take your things home. I hadn't realised you were so forgetful. It must be the rotting caused by those horrific books of yours.”  
  
“Maa, sensei, what would I do without you?” Kakashi cheerfully patted him on the shoulder. “Lose my head? It happens anyhow.”  
  
Iruka rolled his eyes and muttered that his head wasn't the only thing he'd lost and took off for home, making sure to stomp extra hard on Anko's roof as he passed. She leaned out the window and flung a series of dango sticks at him in greeting, spitting out another one as Kakashi passed by just after. The stick fell to the street where it impaled the topside of Ebisu's boot as he stared at the shinobi running on the rooftops. It took a few long seconds for the pain to filter in and he yelped, jumping up and down as he tried to pulled the stick out. Anko turned her attention to him and blinked.  
  
“Ebisu! Again!?”  
  
  
Iruka's front door opened to a cascade of orange buttons and he groaned in annoyance. Why _hadn't_ they dealt with that before they'd left? Naruto pushed past, annoyance at the rigged vote gone, as he happily scooped the buttons into a bag while commenting on the difficulty of finding just that particular shade of button. That solved the issue of the hallway in any case.  
  
The oddest hint of _dog_ lingered in the flat, setting off alarms in Iruka's head. The hallways were suspiciously clean and sparkling, two conditions that were completely absent whenever Naruto—and Kakashi now—came to visit. The mess of dishes left from breakfast were neatly stacked in cupboards. The soil in Shisha-kun and Ukki-san's pots were damp from a recent watering. The stash of _Icha Icha_ he _knew_ he'd collected was missing from under the kotatsu where he normally kept it. It was all very suspicious.  
  
Naruto shouted that Iruka was amazing for having created a house-cleaning jutsu and that he should teach it to him one day. Sakura collapsed on the ground in relief, still traumatised from Naruto's house. Gai and Lee both posed randomly, both expounding Iruka-sensei's youthful virtues. Sasuke said nothing and stared at Kakashi with narrowed eyes. Iruka rolled his eyes as the missing piece slid into place.  
  
“Abusing your summons again, Kakashi-sensei? Tell them to be quicker next time. They missed all those buttons,” he hummed.  
  
“Maa, sensei. How cruel—endorsing small swallowable, inedible objects near animals. I should report you to Ibiki-san. You could be a risk to Konoha,” Kakashi whined.  
  
“You're the one who should be reported. You're a risk to my mental health,” Iruka muttered.

**Author's Note:**

> These were originally written for the 12 Days of Christmas Challenge on Livejournal in 2010, starting with the first day of Christmas (December 25). It's basically all crack and I apologise for nothing.


End file.
